


don't look down

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: AUs, Barricades, Beginnings, Bittersweet, Endings, F/M, Gen, Mix of canons, Multiple Lives, Onesided Relationships - Freeform, Pining, Post-Barricade, Reimagining, Reincarnation, Scenarios, life after life, scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 02:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13626456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Eponine lives...again, and again, and again, and again...





	don't look down

**Author's Note:**

> I happened across this challenge on the news page and was inspired to dig this draft out of my computer and finally finish it. It's based on the amazing novel Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which I would highly recommend, and is a weird mish-mash of all the different sorts of canon, so just a heads-up there. Anyway, midnight ramblings from me over, enjoy!  
> Loyaulte xxx

**One.**

It's a warm, blustery almost-night when Monsieur Marius stumbles back into his apartment, his shirt soaked in blood, holding a handkerchief to a gash on his forehead. She and Azelma had been banished from their room - Go, earn some money you useless brats, Thenardier had snarled - and whilst Azelma was happy to go and hang around street corners, rustling her poor, patched skirts and hoping some gent would take a fancy to her dirty red hair and eyes too large for her face, Éponine can't bring herself to fake moans against a dirty alley wall and greedily count coins with the feel of some grimy stranger sticking to her skin. Looking back, that was a good thing, because it was only an hour after she'd been kicked out that he appears, murmuring to himself and swaying on his feet.

She leaps up, runs towards him. "Monsieur Marius, what happened?"

He looks at her like he doesn't recognise her. Then, "'Ponine?"

"Do you have your key? Come on, we've got to get that cleaned up..."

"It's not my blood."

"Whose is it, then?"

His expression tells her that she doesn't want to know. She shuts her mouth, lets him fumble with the key and then they're into his room, the mirror glinting in the half-darkness. He lets her help him sit down on the bed. "Have you seen a doctor?"

"No, Joly said I'd be fine, but I had better not go to the Tuileries. I've twisted my ankle. Enjolras doesn't want anyone who can't run."

"Alright then," Éponine tries to remember what her mother told her to do when Montparnasse first cut her with his knife. "Keep the pressure on that cut. It's bleeding an awful lot."

"Head wounds do," he replies. "Don't worry yourself, 'Ponine, I've spent enough time around medical students to know a few things."

"I do worry about you. I always worry." She's glad that the room is black enough to hide the blush painting fire across her cheeks. He smiles at her, half hazy, half out of it, but it's not like his usual smiles, all thinking of other things (the revolution, the cause) and not even seeing her. This time it’s different; there’s blood everywhere, but he’s finally looking at her like she’s real, like she’s a person instead of an outline or a ghost.

"So, I take it your revolution was successful?"

"At the moment. We'll see what happens when the dawn comes. I'll murder Lafayette myself if he signs another damn treaty and gets us another king."

Éponine laughs. "He wouldn't dare, though, would he? It's only been two years since they put Louise-Phillipe on the throne, and you're still fighting it, even though he's better than the last old codger."

Marius can't seem to hide his shock. Éponine laughs. The sound sticks in the air between them. "I do listen some of the time your pretty friend is talking on top of tables. In any case, it's mighty hard to block him out."

Before she knows it, Marius is laughing too, and then all of a sudden, he's holding her hand. "Thank you, 'Ponine," he says, and she looks down.

"S'nothing."

"No, truly. Thank you. You have been such a good friend to me."

"Thanks." She bends down to rip a piece off her skirt. "Did your doctor friends teach you how to wrap an ankle? Wouldn't want you to miss out on the event of the century."

"Yes, I think I remember..." he takes her through the motions, and when he's standing carefully, testing his weight, he looks down at her. "Are you coming?"

"You want _me_ to come with _you?"_

"Yes. Why would I not, citoyenne?"

Warmth unfurls its wings inside her stomach, and she nods. He takes her hand, and shivers thrill up her arm and down her spine. Monsieur Marius, her Monsieur Marius is _holding her hand._ Surely she's dreaming, surely this is just a torment dreamed up by her imagination, that she'll wake up, and they'll go back to being just friends, he'll find a beautiful bourgeois to hold hands with and...but no, he's pulling her out of the door and down the street, down a maze of streets and she has no idea where they're going, but suddenly they're in front of the Hôtel De Ville, at the back of a crowd waiting in almost eerie silence, the tension pressing everyone flat against each other. Even the stars seem to be holding their breath.

When, as dawn creeps slowly across the sky, streaks of colour splashing across the houses, Lafayette finally emerges onto a balcony in the centre facade the Hôtel de Ville with a spate of revolutionary leaders - if she squints, she thinks she can see the bright blonde head of Marius' friend Enjolras -  the quiet grows ever closer, until, suddenly, people are screaming, screaming and cheering and a thunderstorm of hats are being tossed into the air. "What did he say?" Éponine leans up to shout in Marius' ear.

"It's a republic. We've won ourselves a Republic!" Marius is beaming broadly, and in a single second, he's leaned down and kissed her. Éponine stares at him wonderingly, touching her lips.

"Congratulations," she says, and then, even though there's no space, he's spinning her, around and around and around, and there's a something about to burst in her chest because he's so happy, because they've won, because what they've been working for all this time has finally come to pass.

Eventually, they end up wending their way back to the Café Musain, and up to the back room. Marius has not let go of her hand, not once, even as he kicks the door open. Some of his group are already there, all looking a little worse-for-wear, tatters of bandages hanging from their bodies, grime and blood soaking into their clothes and exhaustion painted across their faces, but she can see that they're all beyond caring.

Marius sits down at the table with some of his closest friends on it, pulling her down to share his chair. She leans her head against his shoulder, blissful at the warmth of his arm draped across the back of her chair. Never in her wildest imaginings could she have thought that Monsieur Marius, her Monsieur Marius - no, not Monsieur anymore, citoyen, that's the word - would hold her like this, would lace his fingers through hers just so, would kiss her like he loved her, or was close to being in love. She pinches herself surreptitiously, and smiles at the sharp twinge of pain. No, this is real. This is reality.

There's a roar as Enjolras appears, hours later, his gun still in his hand, and then he's going round the room, embracing everyone. When he gets to Marius, he looks at the way Éponine is tucked into Marius' side. He smiles, and leans forward to pull his friend close, and only Éponine catches what he whispers into Marius' ear.

"We thought you'd never catch on."

Then he squeezes Éponine's shoulder politely. "Welcome to the new Republic, citoyenne."

"Thank you," she replies neatly, and he's gone, leaping up onto a table and starting an impromptu speech. Marius squeezes her hand.

"Come on, 'Ponine. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted."

"I am too. I think I've heard enough of speech-making for one lifetime."

He laughs, and she smiles delightedly. She can't get enough of feeling like this. "Who knows what Enjolras will go on to do now we've got our Republic?"

"Who knows?" she echoes, loving the way it sounds on her tongue. The uncertainty of the future doesn't frighten her anymore, not like when she was newly poor and not quite understanding why her father didn't chuck her under the chin and call her his little princess any longer. The uncertainty is thrilling, exciting, beautiful...and all because she's realised that dreams can quite easily become real.

**Two.**

It's years later, and still, she cannot get the screams out of her head. They twist and twist and twist, writhing and turning, all blood red and gunmetal grey behind her eyes. Most of the time, she keeps them under wraps, just the same as the scarred hand she hides behind neat green gloves, even when she’s tending to her children at home.

She doesn’t have a bad life, now, she thinks. It’s not as bad as the time on the streets, the freezing snow hurling itself through a shattered window and hunger always clawing at her insides, and maybe not quite as good as the spoiled, sheltered life she led back in Montfermeil. Sometimes she wonders what would have happened if she’d stayed that child forever – never grown up, never seen the despicable things men do to each other for the sake of progress. She snorts, now, thinking about the notion. It’s stupid. Progress will never happen, progress cannot work. Not when anyone who attempts it ends up drowning in their own blood as wave after wave of bullets slam into the shutters above the barricade.

Her husband often finds her sitting and staring into the fire, turning her gnarled fingers of her right hand over and over in the left, and he presses a kiss to the top of her head and leaves her to it, going to work over the latest medical paper or to read to their children. He’s a big believer in progress. She doesn’t have the heart to tear his big ideas and big dreams to pieces when he brings them up.

But that doesn’t stop her, in eighteen-forty-eight, sixteen years after the emeute that killed the only man she thinks she’ll ever truly love and all those _boys_ who did nothing wrong but fight for a better world, going out into the streets and celebrating the revolution. She thinks of them, looking down from the clouds, and hopes that wherever they are, they’re happy.

**Three.**

In the end, it takes her hours to die. They just leave her there, curled at his feet, with the red flag in his hand draped across her face so all she can see is the light through crimson cloth. She doesn’t have the strength to move it even if she wanted to – why would she, after all? All she’d see would be her friends, dead across the bullet-hole peppered wooden floorboards, the gaping maw where they’d hacked off the staircase in a desperate, fevered attempt to keep the National Guard from following them. She rests her head against the itchy wool of Enjolras’ trousers and tries to breathe through the pain of six rounds in her chest, watching death move slowly over the horizon towards her.

It had started so innocently. They had noticed her hanging around with Gavroche, and then one evening, Monsieur Courfeyrac had asked her where he was, and she’d shrugged and given him a gap-toothed attempt at friendliness and said, “No idea what my brother gets up to when I don’t see him here.”

She’d noticed a change in their behaviour towards her, after that. She’d often be allowed to come into the backroom – the sacred ground, where no woman other than Louison the maid had been allowed to set foot – and huddle down by the fire, they’d buy her a meal whenever they did for Gavroche, and slowly, she’d started to listen to them instead of just stare doe eyed at Monsieur Marius, hoping that he’d notice her. Once she’d started listening, well, that was all it took. They were complete idiots, in the beginning, but so fervent, so idealistic, so committed to building a better world for people like her – how could she not fall in love with them?

She’d sidled up behind Enjolras one evening as he was discussing the location of a rally over a map with a couple of the others, and when he’d paused for breath, she’d darted in and pointed and gone, “You stupid ass, all the coppers hang out in that café there when they aren’t on patrol. You’d get nicked before you even started.”

He’d turned and stared at her for a second, stunned, and then Gavroche had ambled over and piped up in support of Éponine, and that’s how she became an honorary member of Les Amis de l’ABC. And this is how it ends – lying in a pool of her own blood, closing her eyes, and hoping there are others out there, others who got away, who can carry the torch onwards, into the dawn.

**Four.**

They find each other in the slips of time after the barricades fall. Well, the truth is she finds him, standing on a bridge with his bottle, and staring at the depths of the Seine like he wanted nothing more than to hurl himself to his death, but hadn’t quite got the courage. She’d stood beside him for ten minutes before he’d noticed her there, flailing a little and hissing, “Don’t sneak up on me like that, you little shit.”

“No need to be nasty,” she’d responded.

“Leave me alone.”

She doesn’t deign that with a reply. He says that every time he sees her, but Éponine refuses to be eroded. She’s followed him around all day once, for lack of something better to do, for a companion in the guilt of still being able to walk and breathe and speak when better people are six feet under in a mass grave somewhere neither of them have wanted to locate. After a moment, she pulls the bottle out of his unresisting fingers and takes a swig, grimacing at the burn of the alcohol as it slides down her throat.

“This could kill a horse,” she says.

“Pity it won’t kill me.”

“If you want to die, you shouldn’t just wait for alcohol poisoning,” she says, taking another swig. “There are so many better ways to do it. This is just weak.”

“Not this again.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted you to do this, R.”

“How would you know what he would have wanted? You never spoke to him.”

“You learn more by watching than talking,” she says, smartly. “It’s why we have two eyes and one mouth.”

“Don’t be so right all the time.”

“No can do. And you know I’m right. This is why you’re being such an arse about it.”

“You’re not doing any better than me.”

“ _Excuse you,_ I have a job.”

“As a seamstress who can’t sew.”

“Musichetta is teaching me, and I’m getting better,” Éponine sticks out her chin defiantly. “What are you doing?”

Silence. When she turns to look at him, there are tears, dribbling down his cheeks, illuminated in the moonlight that throws shadows across the bridge. She hesitates for a second, then puts her arms around him, and he collapses into her like the end of a storm – she staggers a little but stays upright. Someone passes on the other side of the road, but Éponine pays them no heed, rubbing little circles on Grantaire’s back with her fingers in an attempt calm him down, to make him feel a little less alone on the edge of the void.

*

It’s not a surprise, the next week, when she hears that he’s gone.

Some people just aren’t built to survive.

**Five.**

Something keeps her away. She’s never been quite sure what it is, that sent her scampering into one of the parks that night instead of back into the twisting alleys of Les Halles, towards the shouts and the gunfire and the spray of red-hot blood, but somewhere inside her, she thanks the small cowardly part that had her run for safety instead of danger. Perhaps she’s growing up, she thinks. That’s what grown up people do, they want the easy things, the warmth and the light and the good dreams, not the jagged edges and the thrilling slither of getting away with daring you never ever imagined yourself capable of.

(She thinks it might be to do with her bruises as well. She couldn’t fight, bruised and sprained from the kicking her father gave her when she finally ventured home after turning them off the Lark’s scent.)

In any case, Éponine Thenardier is nowhere near the fighting that night, or the next morning. But when it’s over, she slides back to the Rue de la Chanvrerrie, where she knows Marius and his friends were – there’s nothing but blood. A few soldiers are loitering, and someone is manoeuvring a cart into position to take the bodies to the morgue (or the mass grave, she doesn’t know which). She picks her way delicately amongst the bodies, looking for the only one she cares about, but he’s not there. She recognises his nice doctor friend, who always used to patch her up when she got beaten too badly to move, and _merde,_ there’s the leader, still hanging upside down out of the window of the Corinthe like a fallen angel, dead fingers still clutching his flag which flutters listlessly in the dribbles of wind.

Her brother was here too, but she refuses to look for him. She refuses to see Gavroche dead – if she doesn’t, then maybe he can live on just as he was in her head, insolent and irreverent and indomitable, despite the fact the streets were more of a mother to him than their Maman ever could be.

She wonders whether she should give up looking for Marius too, to remember him as distracted and smiling and a bit more in love with her than he ever used to be, but that thought is put to rest when she sees a familiar black coat with the patches in the elbows. Without warning, her knees give out, and there’s a noise, and she doesn’t realise it’s her until there’s a hand on her shoulder. She hisses and twists around; it’s one of the soldiers, who crouches, a respectful distance away. His eyes are sad. “Was he yours, Mademoiselle?” he asks.

 _Oh, another one_ , Éponine thinks, hysterically. _What is it with these young men and calling me Mademoiselle? I’m not a proper young miss, and they know it._

“Yes, Monsieur,” Éponine chokes out. “We were going to be married, but then this and…” she buries her face in her hands, part grief, part acting. “How could he do this to me?”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” she says, wiping away her tears. “I…what will happen to them?”

“You may claim his body, if you wish.”

“Don’t have enough money for a funeral. Besides, he would want to be laid to rest with his friends. They were so close.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” the soldier says. Éponine forces herself to give him a wobbly smile, and then he’s gone, and she’s left, staring at the body of the man she thought she loved, and wondering where the bloody hell she’s supposed to go from here.

**Six.**

It always comes back around to the barricade, she thinks. Somehow, she’s always known this – it’s one of the sticking points in time. It always happens, no matter what, and somehow, she’s always sucked into it, one way or another. There’s no avoiding the ramparts of broken furniture, rearing towards the sky, the gunshots, the yells. Every time, she has to live through it, the hope, the fear, the desperation – even if she’s not physically present, cowering behind a wall, or fighting for all she’s worth, the whole city feels the mark of these boys, these revolutionaries. The city holds its breath for them.

When she takes a bullet for Monsieur Marius – because Monsieur Marius cannot die, he must not die – scenes start to flicker before her eyes: a husband and four children dancing in the streets; light through red cloth; kind eyes and a National Guardsman’s uniform; kissing someone in the square in front of the Tuileries with a jubilant crowd around them.

Marius is holding her close now, petting her hair, and she feels the end coming, but somewhere, deep in her bones, she knows this isn’t it, this isn’t how her story will end. She can’t explain it, and doesn’t think she’s ever going to be able to, but then again, how will anyone else ever understand if she has no idea what happens either?

All it boils down to is this: Éponine Thenardier takes a deep, rattling breath, and prepares to start again.

**.Fin.**


End file.
